


Instinct Versus Reason

by redd093



Category: No Fandom
Genre: Fiction, Gen, Horror, Literature, Short Stories, prose
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-14
Updated: 2014-04-14
Packaged: 2018-01-19 09:26:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1464223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redd093/pseuds/redd093
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Walked back to my dorm room during a storm and though of this. I love my mind. I welcome questions and opinions! Thank you!</p>
    </blockquote>





	Instinct Versus Reason

**Author's Note:**

> Walked back to my dorm room during a storm and though of this. I love my mind. I welcome questions and opinions! Thank you!

Her bedroom door opened just as the lightning flashed, bathing the room in a strange color and casting bizarre shadows in every direction. She screamed and fell out of her chair, her head snapping to the doorway. But to her relief, it was only her father, wearing a yellow raincoat and holding his car keys in one hand and a flash light in the other. When she managed to calm herself down, she laughed and pushed herself off the ground. "Daddy, you almost made me piss my pants."

Her father laughed a little. "Sorry honey. I came to tell you that the college up the road called. Their power went out during the storm, and they want me to go fix a  
couple blown fuses." 

Her father was a maintenance worker, so getting a call like this in the middle of the night was no surprise. "Mind if I come too?"

Her father raised an eyebrow. It wasn't often that she asked this sort of stuff. "I'd love to have you come with me, but why?"

She shifted nervously from one foot to the other. "Well, the storm is kind of unnerving, and you never know when our power might go out too. Plus, it's raining pretty badly out there, and I'd get worried with you out there all alone." 

Her father laughed. "Alright, get dressed and meet me in the truck."

Where they lived, there was forest all around them. So it wasn't surprising when her father had to stop multiple times to move a fallen tree out of the road. But since she had lived in the same house for her entire life, she couldn't figure out why she was feeling so nervous about the woods that night. Whenever her father would get out of the truck, or whenever another crack of lightning filled the sky, she found herself constantly looking into the thick groupings of trees, almost as if she was searching for something. 

When they finally arrived at the college, she was expecting to feel relief, since she would finally be able to get out of the truck and get the woods out of her mind. But the moment she and her father entered the building, she felt even more uneasy. And it wasn't the unfamiliarity, because she had gone here plenty of times to visit friends and such. Plus, it was a community college, meaning that nobody lived there, and the people that called her father had already gone home. The pure emptiness of the building was crushing. 

Her father turned on his flashlight and scanned the hallway. "I'm going to head to the maintenance room. Do you want to come with me, or do you want to stay here and wait?" 

"Daddy, you know how clumsy I am. If I try to walk down with you, I'll only trip and fall." She didn't know why she was saying that. She was scared and she didn't want her father to leave her side. But it was like her instincts took over her brain and decided that going with him wasn't a good idea. 

"Alright. I should be done in about ten minutes." And after giving her a peck on the cheek, her father walked off, leaving her alone. 

Again, living in the forest was something she was used to. Seeing strange shadows was just a car's headlights passing through the trees. A noise was the wind causing a branch to scrape against the house, or a small creature outside. Even getting the feeling that you're being watched was an everyday thing, as deer and wild dogs could often be found in the back yard. There wasn't much of anything that could scare her. She was even friendly towards spiders and snakes. But all of that just made things even more scary when she found herself freaking out over every little thing while she was in the dark college hallway. 

Just like her father said, after only ten minutes, the lights came back on. She smiled in relief and started walking in the direction her father had gone. 

"Daddy! You did it!" She turned the corner and saw an open door marked "Maintenance", and walked up to it. "Daddy?" But when she peaked into the room, he wasn't there. First, the uneasy feeling about the woods. Then the dread that she got from being in the college. And now her father was missing. That completely did it for her. She started to freak out. 

"Daddy?! Daddy, where are you?!" She frantically ran down the hallways, looked in the different classrooms, and constantly shouted and screamed for her father. Finally, when she was in complete tears, she sat down in one of the hallways, curled into a ball and just let it all out. 

After about five minutes of sobbing into her knees, she felt a little better, although she remained on the ground for a just thought things out for a while. She was in an empty college. Her father was missing. And she knew her father, he wouldn't have just walked off without coming to get her first. And he didn't come to get her, because she went the same way he went. So that meant that something bad must have happened. She decided that she should call the police. But she left her cell phone at home. She could always go get it. But she was too afraid of walking alone in the storm. She could take her father's truck. But she didn't know how to drive. So her best bet, was to keep looking for her father. And if she didn't find him by daybreak, then she could leave and go find help. Finally decided on a course of action, she stood up and started walking down the hallway once more. 

Before too long, she found herself in one of the college halls that didn't have any windows. There was a door that she came through, and another door at the end. The wind whipping around the building, causing weird howling noises, which sounded even creepier in the dead silent college. Walking down it, she could just imagine the hallway getting longer with every step. But that stuff doesn't happen in real life. Instead, she reached the other door without any complications. 

When she opened the door, she first felt an amazing sense of relief. There was her father. He was completely fine. He hadn't been hurt in any way at all. But then, she felt confused. She called out to him, but he just kept walking towards a different hallway. And lastly, came the most horrible sense of fear she had ever experienced. Because out of the hallway that her father was walking towards, almost in a dazed state, were dozens of writhing black tentacles. For a moment, she was frozen in place. She couldn't move. She wanted to run to her father, but everything in her body screamed, telling her to run away. And when her father was a few steps from walking into the tentacles reach, she finally managed to unglue her feet and dash towards him. 

Her father entered the hallway before she could get to him, but she was only a few seconds behind. She could still grab him and yank him away. But when she rounded the corner and faced the hallway that he had entered, it was empty. She shook her head slowly. It couldn't be. There was no way that her father could have disappeared in that small amount of time. It was just physically impossible. But then, that primal fear crept back into her as the image of those black tentacles went through her mind. This time, she let her body take control, and she ran as fast as she could. She immediately recalled every single step she had taken through the college, and found herself running for the college entrance. 

When she saw that she only had one corner left to turn, she could almost laugh. But when she rounded it, she once again froze. And the fear that came from the tentacles suddenly seemed like the fear you got before a test you didn't study for. There was something blocking the doorway. It was tall and slender, and failed to completely block off the outside. She could see the wind shaking the trees, and her father's truck, just past the obstruction. What scared her the most wasn't that she didn't know what was blocking the door. What scared her most, was that she didn't want to know. 

So she slowly raised her foot to take a step backwards, and flinched when the obstruction suddenly twitched. Whatever was blocking the doors, it was alive. She took a deep breath as silently as she could, and went back to trying to walk away slowly. 

After a minute of moving her foot, she finally placed it on the ground, and took another deep breath. The thing in front of the door hadn't moved, but it seemed to be starring at her. And just because it hadn't moved, didn't mean that she wanted to risk it by making a mad dash. So she gingerly lifted her other foot to take another step backwards, when the lightning flashed. And in the flash, she suddenly saw the thing standing above her, it's blank white face towering over her, and it's grinning teeth, dripping with blood. 

 

She jolted awake at the sound of the thunder. She was drenched in a cold sweat, and shaking like a leaf. She just had a nightmare. And the realization that it was a nightmare brought her more happiness then she could have ever imagined. It was the most terrifyingly life like dream she had ever had. 

She looked around, and saw that she had fallen asleep at her desk while doing homework. It was now storming out, which explained why it was storming in her dream. Leaning back in her chair, she laughed nervously and took deep breaths to calm herself down. It was just a dream. 

Her bedroom door opened just as the lightning flashed, bathing the room in a strange color and casting bizarre shadows in every direction. She screamed and fell out of her chair, her head snapping to the doorway. And to her utter horror, it was her father, wearing a yellow raincoat and holding his car keys in one hand and a flash light in the other.


End file.
